from Under the
Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization by Dr. Alvin Schmidt

"I have come that they may have life." Jesus Christ
in John 10:10

When in Rome, do as the Romans do." So goes an old
saying. But when the early Christians arrived in Rome from Jerusalem and parts
of Asia Minor, they did not do as the pagan Romans did. They defied the entire
system of Rome's morality. The low view of human life among the Romans was one
of their pagan depravities: "The individual was regarded as of value only if he
was a part of the political fabric and able to contribute to its uses, as
though it were the end of his being to aggrandize the State."1 Moreover, the pagan gods taught the people no
morals, as St. Augustine, a former pagan himself, knew from personal experience
(The City of God 2.4). This too did not enhance the value of human life.

The low value of life among the Romans was a shocking affront to the early
Christians, who came to Rome with an exalted view of human life. Like their
Jewish ancestors, they saw human beings as the crown of God's creation; they
believed that man was made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Although that
image was tarnished by man's fall into sin, they nevertheless believed the
words of the psalmist to be true: "You made him [man} a little lower than the
heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor" (Psalm 8:5). They also
knew that God so honored human life that he himself assumed it by becoming
incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son (John 1:14).
Thus, unlike the Romans, Christians did not hold human life to be cheap and
expendable. It was to be honored and protected at all costs, regardless of its
form or quality. By doing so, they countered many depravities that depreciated
human life.

COUNTERING THE DEPRAVITY OF INFANTICIDE

One way that Christianity underscored the sanctity of human life was its
consistent and active opposition to the widespread pagan practice of
infanticide - killing newborn infants, usually soon after birth. Frederic
Farrar has noted that "infanticide was infamously universal" among the Greeks
and Romans during the early years of Christianity. 2 Infants were killed for various reasons.
Those born deformed or physically frail were especially prone to being
willfully killed, often by drowning. Some were killed more brutally. For
instance, Plutarch (ca. A.D. 46 - 120) mentions the Carthaginians, who, he
says, "offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy
little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many
lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan"
(Moralia 2.171D). Cicero (106 - 43 B.C.) justified infanticide, at least for
the deformed, by citing the ancient Twelve Tables of Roman law when he says
that "deformed infants shall be killed" (De Legibus 3.8). Even Seneca (4 B.C.?
- A.D. 65), whose moral philosophy was on a higher plane than that of his
culture, said, "We drown children who at birth are weakly and abnormal" (De Ira
1.15). So common was infanticide that Polybius (205? - 118 B.C.) blamed the
population decline of ancient Greece on it (Histories 6). Large families were
rare in Greco-Roman society in part because of infanticide. 3 Infant girls were especially vulnerable. For
instance, in ancient Greece it was rare for even a wealthy family to raise more
than one daughter. An inscription at Delphi reveals that one second-century
sample of six hundred families had only one percent who raised two daughters.
4

Historical research shows that
infanticide was common not only in the Greco-Roman culture but in many other
cultures of the world as well. Susan Scrimshaw notes that it was common in
India, China, Japan, and the Brazilian jungles as well as among the Eskimos.
5 Writing in the 1890s, James Dennis shows
in his Social Evils of the Non-Christian World that infanticide was also
practiced in many parts of pagan Africa. He further states that infanticide was
also "well known among the Indians of North and South America," 6 that is, before the European settlers, who
reflected Christian values, outlawed it.

As with abortion (discussed
below), the early Christians called the Greco-Roman practice of infanticide
murder. To them infants were creatures of God, redeemed by Christ. Moreover,
they knew of Christ's high regard for little children, for he once said, "Let
the little children come to me, and do not hinder them" (Matthew 19:14). He
spoke these words in response to his disciples, who thought he should not be
bothered with people bringing small children to him. Having been reared as
Jews, who saw children as a blessing, the disciples oddly enough reflected an
opinion of children that was inconsistent with their Jewish heritage. One
wonders whether the prevailing Greco-Roman culture's low view of children had
to some degree influenced the disciples' remarks.

Early Christian
literature repeatedly condemned infanticide. The Didache (written between ca.
85 and 110) enjoins Christians, "[T]hou shalt not. . . commit infanticide."
7 One finds infanticide also condemned in
the Epistle of Barnabas (ca. 130) as it comments on the Didache's opposition to
this immoral practice. 8 Callistus of Rome
(d. ca. 222), a onetime slave who later became bishop of Rome, was equally
appalled at this common method of disposing of unwanted infants.

The
Christian opposition to infanticide was not only prompted by their seeking to
honor one of God's commandments, "You shall not kill [murder]," but also by
their remembering St. Paul's words, written to them in Rome shortly before Nero
had him executed: "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this 'world, but
be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and
approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will" (Romans
12:2). There was no way that they would conform to the ungodly practice of
infanticide; to do so would have violated their belief in sanctity of human
life.

"Infanticide," said the highly regarded historian W. E. H.
Lecky, "was one of the deepest stains of the ancient civilizations."
9 It was this moral practice that the early
Christians continually opposed wherever they encountered it. And it was this
depravity that they sought to eliminate. Before the Edict of Milan in 313,
Christian opposition to infanticide obviously was not able to influence the
pagan emperors to outlaw it. But only a half century after Christianity
attained legal status, Valentinian, a Christian emperor who was sufficiently
influenced by Bishop Basil of Caesarea in Cappadocia, formally outlawed
infanticide in 374 (Codex Theodosius 9.41.1). He was the first Roman emperor to
do so.

Total elimination of infanticide never became a reality,
however, largely because not everyone converted to Christianity and because
some who joined the church were only nominal Christians who still retained some
pagan values and did not take seriously the church's stand on infanticide.
Thus, evidence show's that many unwanted infants in many parts of Europe in the
Middle Ages and after continued to have their lives snuffed out by their
parents. But throughout the centuries the Christian church never wavered in its
condemnation of infanticide. And as geographical states developed on the
continent of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Christian influence
that prompted Valentinian to outlaw the killing of infants became the norm
throughout the West, and anti-infanticide laws (with the exception of today's
partial-birth abortion) remain in effect in much of the world today. It is one
of Christianity's great legacies.

COUNTERING THE DEPRAVITY OF
ABANDONING INFANTS

When the Christians arrived in Rome and its
vicinity, they encountered another culturally depraved practice that showed its
low regard for human life. If unwanted infants in the Greco-Roman world were
not directly killed, they were frequently abandoned - tossed away, so to speak.
In the city of Rome, for instance, undesirable infants were abandoned at the
base of the Columna Lactaria, 10 so named
because this was the place the state provided for wet nurses to feed some of
the abandoned children. Child abandonment had even become a part of Roman
mythology. The city of Rome, according to mythology, was reputedly founded by
Romulus and Remus, two infant boys who had been tossed into the Tiber River in
the eighth century B.C. They both survived and were reportedly reared by
wolves. This mythological account is one of many that reveal the Roman practice
of abandoning undesired children, or exposti, as they were called.

Sometimes, according to Suetonius (A.D. ca. 69 - ca. 140), the biographer of
Roman caesars, infants were also abandoned in a symbolic ritual of grief, for
instance, when people in A.D. 41 grieved the assassination of Emperor Caligula.
11 This supports the observation that "the
'exposure' of children was a part of the standard litany of Roman depravities."
12

The Greeks too practiced child
abandonment. Like the Romans, they had their cultural myths that related tales
of child exposure. For instance, the well-known Greek play Oedipus Rex revolves
around Oedipus, who, abandoned as a three-day-old infant by his father King
Laius of Thebes, was found by a shepherd of King Polybus of Corinth and his
wife Merope, who reared the boy. Similarly, Ion, the founder of lonia, was
abandoned as an infant by his mother, as were other noteworthy Greek
characters, such as Poseidon, Aesculapius, and Hephaistos, according to ancient
literature. Greek mythology also depicts Paris, who started the Trojan War, as
an abandoned child. And Euripides, Greek poet of the fifth century B.C.,
mentions infants being thrown into rivers and manure piles, exposed on
roadsides, and given for prey to birds and beasts. 13 In Sparta when a child was born, it was
taken before the elders of the tribe, and they decided whether the child would
be kept or abandoned. 14

In
neither Greek nor Roman literature can one find any feelings of guilt related
to abandoning children. One could argue that there might have been at least a
scintilla of subconscious guilt, however, for many of the Greco-Roman stage
plays and mythologies revolve around famous characters and heroes who were
abandoned as children. These plays may unwittingly have soothed guilty
consciences in that they permitted the audience to infer that their abandoned
children really did not die but instead became cultural heroes.

As
with infanticide, Christians opposed and condemned the culturally imbedded
custom of child abandonment. Clement of Alexandria, a highly influential church
father in Egypt in the latter part of the second century, condemned the Romans
for saving and protecting young birds and other creatures while lacking moral
compunctions about abandoning their own children. 15 Similarly, the African church father
Tertullian (ca. 200) strongly denounced this practice. 16 Lactantius, the church father who tutored
one of the sons of Constantine the Great, opposed child abandonment, saying,
"It is as wicked to expose as it is to kill" (Divine Institutes 1.6). A
sixth-century canon of the church called parents who abandoned children
"murderers" (Patri Graeco-Latina 88:1933).

Christians, however, did
more than just condemn child abandonment. They frequently took such human
castaways into their homes and adopted them. Callistus of Rome gave refuge to
abandoned children by placing them in Christian homes. Benignus of Dijon (late
second century), who like his spiritual mentor Polycarp was martyred, provided
protection and nourishment for abandoned children, some of whom were deformed
as a result of failed abortions. Afra of Augsburg (late third century) was a
prostitute in her pagan life, but after her conversion to Christianity she
"developed a ministry to abandoned children of prisoners, thieves, smugglers,
pirates, runaway slaves, and brigands." 17
Christian writings are replete with examples of Christians adopting throw-away
children.

In spite of the many severe persecutions that Christians
endured for three centuries, they did not relent in promoting the sanctity of
human life. They saw child abandonment as a form of murder, and their tenacious
efforts eventually produced results. When Emperor Valentinian outlawed
infanticide in 374, he also criminalized child abandonment (Code of Justinian
8.52.2). Following him, Honorius and Theodosius II (both emperors in the fifth
century) ruled that a foundling child had to be announced to people in the
church, and if no one claimed it, the finder could keep it. 18 By the eleventh century, King Haroldsson
(St. Olaf) of Norway fined parents who exposed a child; his successor, King
Magnus, tightened the exposure law by charging such parents with murder.
19

Although laws were enacted
outlawing child abandonment in much of Europe, where Christianity was
prominent, the practice did not come to a complete end. As with infanticide,
many people did not internaiize the moral and ethical teachings of
Christianity. As Jesus said in one of his parables, some seed falls on good
ground, some on stones, and some among thorns (Matthew 13:3 - 9). The "thorns"
in the early church were those who never really converted to Christianity. Some
joined the church, especially after the persecutions ended, because it was
socially or materially advantageous. They had not really disavowed the pagan
customs. Hence, one account in the sixteenth century reveals a priest lamenting
that "the latrines resound with the cries of children who had been plunged into
them." 20

The Christian
opposition to child abandonment, which resulted in laws outlawing this practice
throughout Europe, along with outlawing infanticide, had the wholesome effect
of morally and legally ascribing to newborn infants the sanctity of life. That
sanctity is in part atrophying today as many people support abortion on demand
and even favor partial-birth abortion (the modern way of practicing
infanticide).

Yet some of Christianity's high accent on human life is
still operative even among the advocates of partial-birth abortions, because
they believe that abandoning an unwanted child in a back alley or in a garbage
can is a heinously criminal act. But apparently the belief in the sanctity of
human life of newborn children is changing, as indicated by the recent rise in
the abandonment of newborn infants in parts of the Western world. The city of
Hamburg, Germany, recently established "Project Findelbaby" for foundling
babies by providing a "baby flap" (resembling a large mailbox slot) at some
buildings where unwanted infants may be dropped off without legal jeopardy.
21 The problem is not confined to Germany.
In the United States, billboards along highways in Texas have recently posted
the plea: "Don't Abandon Your Baby." 22 And
in the spring of 2000, seventy-two state legislatures in the United States were
seriously thinking about imitating the Hamburg practice.

However
unfortunate the present-day baby-flap boxes might be, they ironically reflect
Christianity's influence with regard to saving the life of abandoned infants.
Rescuing infants in this manner is in part a revival of what the Christian
church did in the Middle Ages. In the ninth century the Council of Rouen
(France) asked women who had "secretly borne children to place them at the door
of the church and provided for them if they were not reclaimed." 23

Countering the Depravity of
Abortion

The low view of human life among the Greco-Romans also
showed itself in widespread abortion practices. Ignoring this factor,
historians and anthropologists tend to cite poverty or food shortage as the
primary reason for their prevalence. However, historical data indicate that
poverty was not the primary cause for the high abortion rates among the Romans
in the century preceding and during the early Christian era. At this time in
history the Roman honor and respect for marriage had virtually become extinct
(see chapter 4). Roman "marriage, deprived of all moral character," as one
historian has noted, "was no longer a sacred bond, and alliance of souls."
24 Juvenal apparently was not exaggeratirig
when he said that a chaste wife was almost nonexistent (Satire 6.161). And
Seneca, the Roman moralist, called unchastity "the greatest evil of our time"
(De Consolatione ad Helviam 15.3). In light of this pronounced deterioration of
marriage, countless Roman women engaged in adulterous sex, and when they became
pregnant, they destroyed the evidence of their sexual indiscretions, thus
adding to Rome's widespread abortions.

There was still another Roman
motive - a rather unusual one - for aborting pregnancies, namely, the desire to
be childless. Seneca said, "Childlessness bestows more influence than it takes
away, and the loneliness that used to be a detriment to old age, now leads to
so much power that some old men pretend to hate their sons and disown their
children, and by their act make themselves childless" (De Consolatione ad
Marciam 19.2). Why? Unmarried or childless persons were assiduously courted and
given undue attention by fortune hunters who hoped to cash in on their
"friends" wills. Historian Will Durant says that "a large number of Romans
relished this esurient courtesy" 25 So
pronounced was this phenomenon that the Roman poet Horace (65 - 8 B.C.) showed
his contempt by satirically telling would-be fortune hunters how to be
successful in their pursuit of childless couples (Satires 2.5). Thus, a
ghoulish desire for other people's fortunes added to the prolificacy of Rome's
abortions.

Long before the birth of Christ, faithful Jews, contrary
to the pagan societies around them, held to the sanctity of human life,
including life in the womb. Flavius Josephus, the first-century Jewish
historian, said that the biblical law (the Pentateuch) "forbids women from
either to cause abortion or to make away with the fetus." He further stated
that a woman who aborts her child "destroys a soul and diminishes the race."
26 First-century Christians, being
predominantly former Jews, similarly valued human life in the womb.

The popular Greco-Roman view, however, was remarkably different. Human life (as
noted above) was cheap and expendable, particularly the life of the unborn.
Long before the birth of Christ, some of the philosophers - such as Plato,
Aristotle, Celsus, and others well into the fourth century after Christ - had
no compunctions about taking the life of an unborn child. Plato argued that it
was the prerogative of the city-state to have a woman submit to an abortion so
that the state would not become too populous (Republic 5.461). Similarly,
Aristotle, once a student of Plato, contended that there was a "limit fixed to
the procreation of offspring," and when that limit was not heeded, "abortion
must be practiced" (Politics 7.14).

The opinions of Plato and
Aristotle and others like them prevailed among the people in ancient Greece. To
be sure, there were some opposing views. For example, as early as the fifth
century B.C. the Pythagoreans frowned upon free and easy abortions, as did the
Greek physician Galen (137 - 200) and the gynecologist Soranus of Ephesus (ca.
98 - 138). Similarly, the Hippocratic Oath of the fifth century B.C. said, "I
will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion." 27 These opposing positions, however, carried
little or no weight among the general populace or its political leaders, no
matter who uttered them.

The Romans essentially followed the Greeks.
Abortion was common and widespread among them too. There was some opposition,
but it also meant little or nothing because the Roman populace had an extremely
low view of human life. Moreover, the few who saw abortion as wrong usually did
so on pragmatic grounds rather than for moral reasons. Thus, the verbally
eloquent Cicero (106 - 43 B.C.) argued that abortion was wrong because it
threatened to destroy the family's name and its right of inheritance; it was an
offense against the father (pater) and it deprived the Republic of a future
citizen. 28 Another opposing voice was that
of the Roman philosopher-statesman Seneca, a onetime teacher of Emperor Nero.
The well-known Roman poet Ovid (43 B.C. - A.D. 17) said in his Amores that
women who had abortions were worthy of death. 29 And the Roman writer Juvenal (ca. A.D. 60 -
140) said the abortionist was "paid to murder mankind within the womb" (Satires
7).

While a few poets and philosophers opposed abortion, the Roman
populace received adequate support from its morally decadent culture and from
its morally depraved emperors, who had no qualms about taking human life -
young or old, prenatal or postnatal. Emperor Tiberius, who ruled from A.D. 14
to 37, and under whose reign Christ was crucified, loved to see tortured humans
thrown into the sea. Emperor Caligula (A.D. 37 - 41), the crazed tyrant who
succeeded Tiberius, arbitrarily killed all who once served in his palace. He
enjoyed seeing human beings dragged through the streets with their bowels
hanging out, and he forced parents to witness the executions of their sons.
Claudius, the successor of Caligula, treasured seeing the blood and gore of men
brutally disemboweled in the Colosseum. Nero (A.D. 54 - 68), who severely
persecuted and executed hundreds of Christians and who had St. Paul and St.
Peter executed, forced Seneca, his former teacher, to commit suicide. Emperor
Vitellius, a successor to Nero, who ruled only for one year, said that the
smell of dead enemy soldiers was sweet, and the death of fellow citizens
sweeter yet. Emperor Domitian (A.D. 81 - 96) killed four vestal virgins,
executed senators who opposed his policies, and killed his niece's husband.
30 And as shown in chapter 1, he severely
persecuted Christians during his rule of terror. Bloody acts of other emperors
could also be cited. Given this culture of killing, abortion was by no means an
anomaly in the eyes of the populace.

Some have argued that the Bible
nowhere specifically prohibits abortion. However, there are at least two
biblical references that cast considerable doubt on this argument. Writing to
the Christians in Galatia about A.D. 55, St. Paul issued a catalogue of sins
(Galatlans 5:20). One of the sins mentioned is pharmakeia, the making and
administering of potions. This word has commonly been translated as "sorcery"
(NRSV) or "witchcraft"(NIV) because potions were often made in a context of
sorcery. However, it is quite likely that when Paul used the word pharmakeia in
Galatians, he meant the practice of abortion, because administering medicinal
potions was a common way of inducing abortions among the Greco-Romans. There is
additional evidence in the New Testament in support of this argument. In
Revelation 21:8, where the Apostle John condemns "sexual immorality," these two
words are immediately followed by the plural word pharmakois, evidently because
sexual immorality often resulted in unwanted pregnancies being aborted.

That pharmakeia (pharmakon), as used by St. Paul in his letter to the
Galatians and St. John in the book of Revelation, apparently refers to the
practice of abortion has added support in extrabiblical literature, both pagan
and Christian. Plutarch (A.D. 46 - 120), a pagan, uses pharmakeia to note that
it was especially used for contraception and abortion purposes (Romulus 22 of
his Parallel Lives). An early Christian document, the Didache, says that
abortion is forbidden, and in so arguing, it uses the words ou pharmakeuseis
(you shall not use potions). These words are immediately followed by "ou
pharmakeuseis teknon en phthora" (you shall not kill a child by abortion).
31 Thus, this passage seems to link potions
(drugs) with the killing of an unborn child. Clement of Alexandria (155 - 215),
an early influential church father, identifies pharrnakeia as an abortifacient.
In criticizing women who conceal their sexual sin, he links abortion (phthora)
with the taking of potions (pharrnakois). 32 About the same time (around 190), Minucius
Felix, a Christian lawyer, declared, "There are women who, by medicinal
draughts, extinguish in the womb and commit infanticide upon the offspring yet
unborn." 33 About two hundred years later
(in 375), Bishop Ambrose wrote that potions were used by well-to-do women to
snuff out the fruit of their womb. 34
Similarly, St. Jerome in about 384 lamented that many women practiced abortion
by using "drugs." 35 And in the latter part
of the fifth century, Caesarius of Arles, in one of his sermons, said, "No
woman should take any drug to procure an abortion." 36 In another sermon he again condemns
abortion, and here too he links it with the taking of a pharmaceutical mixture
(potiones in Latin). 37 Basil of Caesarea,
a bishop in the latter half of the fourth century, asserted, "Women. . .who
administer drugs to cause abortion, as well as those who take poisons to
destroy unborn children are murderesses." 38

Whether abortion was performed by
using some type of potion or by some other means, prominent Christian leaders
unequivocally condemned it. For instance, Athenagoras, a Christian philosopher
and layman writing in about A.D. 177 to Emperor Marcus Aurelius, defended his
fellow Christians against the preposterous charge of cannibalism that stemmed
from Christians believing they received the body and blood of Christ in the
Lord's Supper. He forcefully responded, "What reason would we [Christians] have
to commit murder when we say that women who induce abortions are murderesses?"
39 Tertullian (d. ca. 220), the Latin
church father in northern Africa, stated the Christian position in opposition
to abortion by saying, "We may not destroy even the foetus in the womb." And he
continued, "Nor does it matter whether you take away the life that is born or
destroy one that is coming to birth" (Apology 9).

By the beginning of
the early fourth century, Christian opposition to abortion was no longer voiced
only by individual theologians but also by the church collectively. For
instance, the church in the West not only condemned abortion in the Synod of
Elvira, Spain (ca. 305 or 306), but it also excommunicated women who had
abortions and did not accept repentance for their acts until their final hour
of life. 40 In the East, the Council of
Ancyra (now modern Turkey) took its stand against abortion in 314. The Canons
of St. Basil, formulated by Basil of Caesarea (d. 379) and accepted by the
Eastern church in the mid-fourth century, opposed abortion and the guild of
abortionists (the sagae). This guild provided abortifacients and surgical
devices for abortion. Its members also sold aborted bodies to the manufacturers
of beauty creams. 41 Basil mobilized
Christians to help minister to women who were facing unwanted pregnancies. At
times he helped stage public protests against abortion. His efforts reportedly
inspired Emperor Valentinian to outlaw abortion, along with infanticide and
child abandonment, in 374.

Antiabortion laws did not put an end to
all abortions, however. Pagans, of course, continued practicing it, as did some
"so-called Christians," as Origen called them. So the church passed more canons
(rules) proscribing it. Thus, in 524 the Council of Lerida (Spain) condemned
abortions, as had the Synod of Elvira two hundred years earlier. In the twelfth
century Ivo Chartes and Gratian noted that from the fourth century to their
day, over four thousand canons had been issued affirming the sanctity of life.
42 Nor did the pro-life affirmations end
with the twelfth century. After the Reformation in the sixteenth century,
Protestants joined the Catholics in condemning abortion. Martin Luther, for
example, asserted that "those who pay no attention to pregnant women and do not
spare the tender fetus are murderers and parricides." 43 John Calvin said, "The unborn child..
though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being... and
should not he robbed of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. "
44

Christian opposition to
abortion, which resulted in antiabortion laws, continued uninterruptedly well
into the twentieth century. In 1945 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran
pastor whom Hitler executed a month before the end of World War II, reflected
the view of the Christian church's long-standing opposition to abortion. Said
he: "Destruction of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right
to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life." 45 Bonhoeffer's statement was rather typical
of Christian theologians and formal church positions up to the 1960s.

As is well known, abortion on demand has become widely accepted today in
Western societies, and as indicated above, liberal theology and secularism have
greatly contributed to its acceptance. Even most mainline Protestant churches,
most of them influenced by liberal theology, have come to accept abortion on
demand and have thereby largely rejected Christianity's long-standing adherence
to the sanctity of human life, at least in regard to abortion. Only a few of
the larger denominations, such as the Christian Reformed Church in North
America, the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod, the Wisconsin Evangelical
Lutheran Synod, the Southern Baptist Convention, and Wesleyan Methodists,
continue to walk the path of their Christian ancestors, reaching back to the
pristine church. And of course the Roman Catholic Church continues to be firmly
opposed to abortion. But even within these denominations, in contrast to the
early church, there is really no Christian admonition or discipline regarding
abortion when some of their members - for instance, legislators - promote
pro-abortion laws.

The early church's opposition to abortion, along
with its condemnation of infanticide and child abandonment, was a major factor
in institutionalizing the sanctity of human life in the Western world. As
historian W. E. H. Lecky has observed, "the value and sanctity of infant life.
. .broadly distinguishe[d] Christian from Pagan societies." 46 The sanctity of life, with the exception of
abortion, is still largely present today. Thus, the words of another historian
are fitting: "The intrinsic worth of each individual man and woman as a child
of God and an immortal soul was introduced by Christianity." 47

As already indicated, until about
the mid-twentieth century Christianity's opposition to abortion was accepted
virtually by everyone, even by those who had little or no identification with
the church. For instance, in the latter part of the nineteenth century even the
feminist leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda
Gage strongly opposed abortion. Anthony said, "I deplore the horrible crime of
child murder [abortion]. . .No matter what motive, love of ease, or a desire to
save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who
commits the deed;.. . but oh! thrice guilty is he who for selfish
gratification.. .drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime."
48 Today, however, most feminists favor and
support the pro-abortion stance. The sanctity of human life, so zealously
proclaimed and defended by the early Christians and their followers for nearly
two millennia, has in the last several decades been significantly undermined by
pro-abortion advocates, commonly outside the context of the church but
sometimes also within sectors of the organized church itself.

COUNTERING THE DEPRAVITY OF GLADITORTAL SHOWS

According to Ausonius,
the Roman writer, gladiatorial games were begun in Rome in 264 B.C. by Marcius
and Decius Brutus, who introduced them at their father's obsequies. Thus, by
the time Christians arrived in Rome, the Romans had watched hundreds of
thousands of gladiators mauled, mangled, and gored to death for at least three
hundred years. These games, as one historian has noted, "illustrate completely
the pitiless spirit and carelessness of human life lurking behind the pomp,
glitter, and cultural pretensions of the great impenal age. "49 Like infanticide, child abandonment, and
abortion, the games underscore Rome's low regard for human life.

Gladiators were usually slaves, condemned criminals, or prisoners of war, all
of whom were considered expendable. 50 Each
gladiator was seen as "crude, loathsome, doomed, lost. . .a man utterly debased
by fortune, a slave, a man altogether without worth and dignity, almost without
humanity." 51 Sometimes freemen (nonslaves)
became gladiators to earn money or because they enjoyed the applause of the
spectators. Only on rare occasions were women gladiators. The gladiators were
physically trained in advance of the contests so that they would be able to put
forth a strenuous fight, thus pleasing the crowds that always included
senators, emperors, praetorians, vestal virgins, pagan priests, and other
prominent Romans.

Gladiatorial contests occurred irregularly and only
by an emperor's decree. They were usually announced unexpectedly, thus
intensifyng the public's interest. 52 These
barbaric spectacles often lasted for months, especially during the second
century. 53 Sometimes a hundred or more
gladiators fought on a given day. Before the games began, carriages drove the
gladiators, dressed in purple chlamyses embroidered with gold, in a parade to
the Colosseum in Rome or to an amphitheater in other cities. Upon entering the
arena, each gladiator turned to the emperor and saluted with his right hand
extended, saying, "Hail, Emperor, those who are about to die salute thee."
54

Each contest required men to
fight men, commonly with the aim of killing the opponents with a sword
(gladius). It was the crowd that largely decided the fate of a weakened,
gasping gladiator. A turned-thumb signal, usually given by women spectators,
instructed the victor to go for the final blow. Often it was also the women who
praised gladiators "with the largest wounds or fell with the greatest calm."
55 The barbaric cruelty, the agonizing
screams of the victims, and the flow of human blood stirred no conscience in
the crowds of the gladiatorial events. To the contrary "the inability or
unwillingness of the gladiator to go eagerly to his slaughter filled the
audience with disgust and wrath and deprived the gladiator of his glory."
56 The Roman writer Seneca in the first
century gives us a glimpse of the depraved enjoyment people had in seeing the
gladiators brutally annihilated. He cites the spectators shouting, "Kill him!
Lash him! Brand him! Why does he meet the sword in so cowardly a way? Why does
he strike so feebly? Why doesn't he die game? Whip him to meet his wounds!" (Ad
Lucilium Epistulae Morales 7.5). To see a gladiator stab and slice his opponent
to death was top-ranked amusement.

Occasionally, gladiators fought
wild beasts that often gored them to death. Whether fighting beasts or men,
thousands upon thousands of gladiators were slaughtered during the seven
centuries of this cruel institution. For instance, Emperor Trajan (98 - 117)
celebrated his conquest of Dacia by holding gladiatorial shows lasting four
months in which ten thousand gladiators participated, and ten thousand wild and
domestic beasts were killed. 57 Of the ten
thousand gladiators, at least half of them died on the sands of the
amphitheater's floor, and many more expired later as a result of the wounds
they had incurred. When Emperor Titus inaugurated the Colosseum in Rome in A.D.
80, five thousand wild animals were killed in one day, along with the numerous
gladiators whose blood saturated the sand of the amphitheater. 58

As indicated above, these "games"
were not confined to the city of Rome. They were also held in other locations
of the empire. Theodor Mommsen, a historian of ancient Rome, notes that these
contests were also very popular in Asia Minor, Syria, and Greece. 59

Christians were appalled by the
gladiatorial games because they reflected the nadir of human morality: gambling
with human lives. They saw these shows, like the moral depravities of
infanticide, child abandonment, and abortion, as flagrant violations of God's
commandment: "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13). Thus, they condemned and
boycotted these bloody contests, and their opposition did not go unnoticed.
Minucius Felix cites a Roman pagan who strongly criticized the Christians for
their anti-gladiatorial posture: "You do not go to our shows; you take no part
in our processions. . .you shrink in horror from our sacred [gladiatorial]
games." 60

The church's leaders
enjoined their members not to attend any of these Roman events. The church
father Tertullian (d. ca. 220), in his book de Spectaculis (Concerning Shows),
devotes an entire chapter to admonishing Christians not to attend gladiatorial
contests. In another of his writings, he condemns the gladiatorial shows for
shedding human blood and reveals that at these events "the entrails of the very
bears, loaded with as yet undigested human viscera, are in great request."
61

Today the mere thought of the
barbaric nature of the gladiatorial games and the fact that for hundreds of
years people saw them as highly desired entertainment makes the avenge human
recoil in horror. Such a reaction is powerful proof of Christianity's great
humanitarian influence on the world at large. Most people now recoil at the
inhuman features of the gladiatorial shows because they have absorbed
Christianity's view of the sacredness of human life and rejected the pagan
philosophy of Stoicism that was so prevalent among the Romans. Stoicism had no
compassion for the weak and the oppressed. This view of human beings sheds
considerable light on why abortion, infanticide, child abandonment, and delight
in seeing helpless gladiators mangled to death were such an integral part of
Roman culture.

Christianity's high view of human life and its concern
for the weak and oppressed, together with its continual growth and influence,
in time moved Christian emperors to ban the gladiatorial contests. Jerome
Carcopino says that "the butcheries of the arena were stopped at the command of
Christian emperors." 62 Similarly, W. E. H.
Lecky states, "There is scarcely any single reform so important in the moral
history of mankind as the suppression of the gladiatorial shows, a feat that
must be almost exclusively ascribed to the Christian church." 63 In short, it was Christianity's high value
of human life, together with its belief that God had sent his Son, Jesus
Christ, so that people might have life more abundantly both here and hereafter,
that slowly under-mined the gladiatorial contests. Under the reign of the
Christian emperor Theodosius I (378 - 395), gladiatorial contests were
terminated in the East, and his son Honorius ended them in 404 in the West.

Some might think that the Roman enjoyment of the gladiatorial
contests was no worse than what millions of Americans enjoy on television.
Without defending the American penchant for violent programs, there is
nevertheless a significant difference between the Roman gladiatorial contests
and violent television scenes. The violence on television is contrived - it
does not maim or kill people - whereas the Roman gladiatorial events were real;
they brutalized human beings and took the lives of the contestants as well.
Even modern boxing matches, whose violence is real, do not permit a
knocked-down boxer to be further pursued by his opponent to the kill, as was
required in the gladiatorial contests. When the downed boxer is seriously hurt,
the referee terminates the match. On the other hand, as one observer has
rightly noted, "To become a gladiator was to embrace, with vengeance, cosmic
cruelty." 64 Disgusting as violent
television programs are, they are substantially different from the violence of
the gladiatorial events.

Allowing individuals to be deliberately
killed for people's enjoyment has not again been permitted in Western societies
since the Christian emperors outlawed the gladiator contests. It seems
appropriate to note that the frequent concern over violence on television that
is often expressed by many Americans and other Westerners is a clear reflection
of Christianity's accent on the sanctity of human life.

THE
MORAL LAWS OF CONSTANTINE AND CONSTANTIUS

Along with the many changes
that brought sanctity to human life during the first four centuries of
Christianity, other humanitarian laws were instituted by the state. For
instance, Constantine the Great (306 - 337), who issued the Edict of Milan in
313 that formally let the Christians live in peace, in 315 outlawed the
branding of the faces of criminals condemned to serve in the mines or as
gladiators. Seeing the human face as "the image of celestial beauty," he
outlawed the branding of slaves. He also ordered speedy trials because he saw
it as wrong to treat a person as guilty before being convicted. And given his
high regard for the Christian cross, he out-lawed crucifixion, the most cruel
form of human execution. 65

Other
reforms followed. Constantine's son, Constantias (337 - 361), ordered the
segregation of jailed male and female prisoners. 66 To most people today the segregation of
male and female prisoners seems rather obvious. But it should be remembered
that the pagan Romans had little or no regard for the welfare of women (see
chapter 4), especially for women who were no longer under the manus
(controlling hand) of their husbands. And since it was quite acceptable to have
sexual relations with such women, the Romans had no moral qualms about housing
men and women in the same prison quarters.

The salutary and humane
acts by Constantine and Constantius are clear indications that the Christian
values regarding the sanctity of human life had powerful influence on both of
them. Constantine has often been criticized for having sided with the
Christians out of mere political expedience. The acts just cited suggest that
his critics have overstated their case.

COUNTERING THE DEPRAVITY
OF HUMAN SACRIFICES

When paganism rules, it is not uncommon to see
human beings sacrificed to pagan gods. Child sacrifices were common rituals of
the Canaanite Baal worshipers in Palestine during the ninth century B.C. It was
this practice that caused the prophet Elijah, with God's approval, to condemn
and destroy 450 prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:6 - 40). Near
Mount Carmel on the site of the ancient city of Meggido, archaeologists have
discovered the remains of infants who, under the corrupt rule of the Israelite
King Ahab and Queen Jezebel in the ninth century B.C., had been sacrificed in a
temple of Ashtoreth, the goddess of Baal. 67 In the eighth century B.C. the corrupt King
Ahaz of ancient Israel turned his back on God and sacrificed (by burning) his
own son to the Canaanite god Molech (2 Kings 16:3). Not too long after Ahaz,
another spiritually fallen king of Israel, King Manasseh, sacrificed his son
(also by burning) in the Valley of Hinnon (2 Kings 21:6). And during the latter
part of the seventh century B.C., the prophet Jeremiah condemned numerous
Israelites for sacrificing "their sons and daughters in the fire" (Jeremiah 7:3
1).

Sacrificing human beings for religious reasons was not confined
to the pagan Canaanites and the spiritually fallen Hebrew kings. For example,
the Irish, before St. Patrick had brought the Christian gospel to them,
"sacrificed prisoners of war to war gods and newborns to the harvest gods."
68 Sacrificing humans was also a common
practice among the pagan Prussians and Lithuanians even until the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. The British author Edward Ryan noted in 1802 that
these people "would have done so to this day were it not for Christianity."
69

Another place where widespread
human sacrifices occurred was in what is now Mexico. Here the Aztec Indians, a
warlike people, frequently fought in order to acquire prisoners whom they used
for human sacrifices. Their prisoners were commonly led up the stairs through
thick clouds of incense to the top of the Great Pyramid. Here the victims were
laid on a sacrificial block, their chests were cut open, and each prisoner's
heart was torn out while he was still alive. According to Richard Townsend,
"Streams of blood [from the many sacrificed prisoners] poured down the stairway
and sides of the monument [pyramid], forming huge pools on the white stucco
pavement." The heads of the victims were commonly "strung up on the skull rack
as public trophies, while the captor-warriors were presented with a severed arm
or thigh." With great rejoicing, the severed body parts were taken home, where
they were made into stew for special Aztec meals. The eating of human flesh was
a ceremonial form of cannibalism. 70

Very similar to the human sacrifices of the Aztecs were those of the
Mayans. Howard La Fay describes their brutality: "A priest ripped open the
victim's breast with an obsidian knife and tore out the still-beating heart."
The priests also drew blood from the victim's genitals. La Fay continues,
"Priests and pious individuals cut holes in their [prisoners'] tongues and drew
rope festooned with thorns through the wound to collect blood offerings."
71

Given the Christian precedence
of having condemned abortion, infanticide, and gladiatorial contests of the
Romans, it is not surprising that the European explorers in Mexico condemned
the human sacrifices of the Aztec and Maya Indians. Referring to the gruesome
religiously based human sacrifices of the Aztec and the Maya Indians, Hernando
Cortes, the leader of the Conquistadors, said that it was "the most terrible
and frightful thing [he and his men] have ever witnessed." 72 Bernal Diaz del Castillo, one of Cortes's
surviving soldiers, wrote that as part of the sacrifices the Indians ate the
flesh of the captured soldiers "with a sauce of peppers and tomatoes. They
sacrificed all our men in this way, eating their legs and arms, offering their
hearts and blood to their idols." 73 Cortes
and his men had, of course, encountered unbridled paganism, and they engaged in
war to eliminate its bloodcurdling abominations.

Castillo's shocking
descriptions show that the Conquistadors - often correctly seen as ruthless,
and who undoubtedly killed more of the enemy than was necessary (a phenomenon
common in war, even though morally wrong) - nevertheless, still retained enough
Christian values to be appalled by what they saw in the pagan sacrifices of the
Aztec and Maya Indians. Cortes, says Castillo, had as his mission "putting a
stop to human sacrifices, injustices, and idolatrous worship." 74 Only a consistent cultural relativist or
zealous multiculturalist would find fault with Cortes's men conquering the
Mayans and Aztecs and thereby abolishing their inhumane rituals. It was another
step in spreading Christianity's doctrine that human life is sacred, this time
bringing it to the New World.

COUNTERING THE DEPRAVITY OF
SUICIDE

Before and during the time of Christ, the low view of human
life among the Romans, largely influenced by the pagan philosophy of Stoicism,
was not confined to the widespread practice of abortion, infanticide, child
abandonment, and gladiatorial shows. It also affected how Romans viewed their
own lives. Death was not an evil, so they "regarded the power of
self-destruction as an inestimable privilege." 75 To take one's own life was an act of
self-glory. Hence, it is not surprising to find that suicide was widely
practiced on all levels of society. Famous Roman philosophers and writers -
most of them of Stoic persuasion - not only spoke well of suicide, but many
committed suicide themselves. The younger Cato, Seneca, Petronius, and some of
the emperors are but a few examples.

"Open your veins" was a familiar
pagan refrain among the Romans. It was the command that Nero gave to his
victims, one of whom was his former teacher Seneca. Later, the Emperor Domitian
(A.D. 81 - 96) gave similar orders to those whom he considered a threat to his
rule. Seneca said, "Nothing but the will need postpone death." And he added,
"If you do not lack the courage, you will not lack the cleverness to die"
(Epistle of Seneca 70.21,24). The Younger Pliny relates the story of Arria
plunging a dagger into her breast and then giving it to her husband. Given her
husband Paetus's terminal illness and her young son's recent death, she no
longer cared to live. Pliny describes Arria's suicide, quoting her admiringly:
"It does not hurt, Paetus." He called Arria's words "immortal, almost divine"
(Letters and Panegyricus 3.16). Yet there was a certain ambivalence in Seneca
regarding death, for in another context he said that when one approaches death,
"one turns to flight, trembles, and laments" (Epistle of Seneca 77.11). This
statement by Seneca shows that even he, the great advocate of suicide, was not
without doubts regarding self-destruction.

Whether it was human life
as a fetus, an infant, or an adult, the early Christians saw God as the creator
of all human life, and thus it was God's exclusive prerogative to end an
individual's life. Given their adherence to the Old Testament Scriptures, their
views were consistent with the words of Job, who in the greatest depths of woe,
having lost all of his many possessions, including his children, and been
stricken with a horrible illness, did not, like the Stoics, think that he had
the right to end his life. Instead, he said, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has
taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised" (Job 1:21).

Critics
of Christianity have sometimes called the nonresistant submission on the part
of the persecuted Christian martyrs a form of suicide. While there were a few
Christians who went out of their way to be martyred - for instance, Ignatius
(d. A.D. 107), who willingly agreed to walk a thousand miles to his martyrdom -
the vast majority of Christians who died in the persecutions were by no means
suicidal.

A few of the early Christians, under the stress of
persecution, did commit suicide. They apparently did not understand the
Christian position on the sanctity of human life and God's role in giving and
taking it. Eusebius cites one such case. A Christian mother and her two
daughters who knew that their persecutors were about to molest them sexually
and then execute them requested permission to go to the river to wash. As they
approached the river, they threw themselves into the water and drowned.
76 There were other instances, but none of
these cases received the approval of any corporate Christian community.
Moreover, the lack of resistance to one's persecutors that was so apparent with
many martyred Christians (as with Ignatius in 107) made their deaths no more
suicidal than did Christ's lack of resistance make his crucifixion a suicidal
act.

The Christian church as a body issued no formal statements
regarding the sinfulness of suicide until the early fourth century. This
occurred at the Synod of Elvira (ca. 305 or 306) when it condemned the acts of
some Christians who apparently went out of their way to be martyred. The
church's silence regarding suicide before this time is not difficult to
understand when one remembers that for three centuries it had to fight for its
life during the years of persecution. All of its energies were needed to
survive.

Clement of Alexandria (d. 213), Lactantius (d. ca. 330), and
Gregory of Nazianus (d. 374) were some early Christian opponents of suicide,
along with Eusebius (d. 339), the church historian, who saw suicide so
incompatible with Christianity's sanctity of human life that, when he referred
to Emperor Maximian's taking his own life, he did not use the word "suicide"
but instead called it a "shameful death" (Ecclesiastical History 1:303).

The strongest opposition, however, came from St. Augustine in the early
fifth century. He wrote in opposition to the Donatists, members of a heretical
schismatic group within the church from northern Africa. Many of their members
committed suicide en masse, primarily because they believed that there was no
forgiveness of sin after baptism. Thus, right after baptism many of them took
their lives. Augustine argued that suicide violated the commandment "You shall
not murder." He further said that if suicide were ap acceptable option, Christ
would not have told his disciples to flee in times of persecution. He also
contended that not a single case of suicide occurred among the patriarchs and
prophets in the Old Testament or among the New Testament apostles.
77

Although, as noted above, the
church corporately condemned suicide at the Synod of Efrira, it did not address
the matter again until the Council of ArIes in 452 declared that suicide was
the result of demonic forces. The Council of Orleans in 533 asserted that
oblations (offerings) were not allowed for those who committed suicide.
78 A generation later, in 563, the Synod of
Braga banned the singing of psalms at the funeral of a suicide and said that
the body of a suicide could not be brought into the church building as part of
the burial ceremony. 79 The Synod ofAuxerre
in 585 reiterated this position. In 693 the Synod of Toledo barred individuals
who had attempted suicide from receiving the Lord's Supper for two months,
during which time they were expected to repent of their sin. 80 The Council of Troyes in Suderkoping in
878, and the Council of Nimes in 1184, denied suicides burial in church
cemeteries. In 1441 the Synod of Sweden restated the decision of Nimes and
added that the burial of a suicide would pollute the cemetery. This practice
continued in many Roman Catholic and Protestant churches even into the
twentieth century. If one visits rural cemeteries in Canada and the United
States today, one can still find, outside the cemetery's fence line, the graves
of individuals who committed suicide.

Following the condemnation of
suicide by church councils, Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century said that
taking one's life was morally wrong because it was a sin against nature:
Everyone naturally loves himself; suicide also injured the community of which
man is an integral part; it was a sin against God's gift of life; and, finally,
it was an act of which one could not repent. 81

Christian opposition to suicide
over the centuries influenced and prompted Western nations to outlaw it. The
recent desire for physician-assisted suicides in the United States - for
example, Oregon's Death with Dignity Act (assisted-suicide law), first passed
in 1994 and reapproved by voters in 1997 - is not only a rejection of
Christianity's historic opposition to suicide but also a repudiation of its
doctrine that human life is sacred and only to be terminated by God, who gave
it in the first place.

BURYING, NOT CREMATING, THE DEAD

To the early Christians the sanctity of life and the human body did not
come to an end when a person died. Believing Christ's promise that he would
raise them and all the dead on Judgment Day, they buried their deceased rather
than cremate them as the Romans commonly did. The Christians strongly opposed
cremation. Similar to their Hebrew ancestors, they saw it as a pagan custom,
and given the sanctity they assigned to the human body (alive or dead), they
also rejected it for is violence and cruelty, according to Tertullian (ca. 160
- ca. 220). With specific reference to cremation, he faulted the Romans,
saying, "What pity is that which mocks its victims with cruelty?" (On the
Resurrection of the Flesh 1). But Christians most prominently opposed cremation
because they saw it as contrary to their firm faith in the resurrection of the
body, a faith that their Roman persecutors (as noted in chapter 1) sometimes
mocked by defiantly burning the bodies of executed martyrs. When the latter
happened, surviving Christians "tried to gather the fragments of their brethren
who had been martyred in the flames." 82
They wanted their deceased to "sleep in peace," an expression found on many
epitaphs in the Christian catacombs (subterranean cemeteries) near Rome. As one
historian of the catacombs has said, they believed that "the body was only
consigned to the earth for a while, as a sacred deposit which could be
reclaimed at some future time when the sea and the earth shall give up their
dead." 83

So strong was the
Christians' belief that the dead were "asleep," waiting to be resurrected, that
they called every burial place a koimeterion, a word borrowed from the Greek
that meant a dormitory where people slumbered. 84 Koimeterion became "cemetery" in the
English language. Thus, every time people use the word cemetery they are using
a term that harks back to the early Christians and their belief that the dead
are merely slumbering until the day of their resurrection.

One Roman
history scholar writes that while cremation was still the general practice, for
example, among the Romans in the city of Ostia, burial was introduced in
various parts of the empire during Emperor Hadrian's reign (A.D. 117 - 138).
85 Whether this change was prompted by
Christianity's opposition to cremation cannot be determined with certainty;
some think it came too early in the life of the church to be thus caused.
However, as A. D. Nock has shown, cremation became increasingly rare by the
third century, and by the fourth it had "almost disappeared." 86 While it may be arguable whether
Christianity influenced many of the Romans to bury their dead in the second
century under Hadrian's reign, it does seem plausible that when cremation
virtually disappeared in the fourth century, it apparently was largely the
result of Christian influence. We need only recall that the aura of Christian
values was so pervasive already in the early fourth century that Constantine
the Great not only issued the Edict of Milan to legalize Christianity, but he
and other Christian emperors were moved to implement numerous other laws and
customs (noted earlier) that supported Christian beliefs and practices.

The practice of burying people continued, and in the eighth century
Charlemagne the Great, who was strongly supportive of Christian doctrine, made
cremation a capital crime. Burial had become the only acceptable way of
disposing of the dead throughout the Holy Roman Empire. Not until the
nineteenth century was cremation brought back into Western countries, and then
only by freethinkers, many of whom, similar to the Romans, denied the biblical
doctrine of the resurrection of the human body.

So consistent and
influential did the Christian practice of burying their dead become over the
centuries that today even American Indians have come to believe that inhumation
is the only proper way to dispose of their dead, as has been shown by their
insistence on burying recently repatriated human skeletons from museums, for
instance. However, when the Europeans arrived on American soil in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, most American Indians did not bury their dead. The
Indians in the Northern Plains, in the Mackenzie subarctic region, and in many
other locations did not inhume their dead, but placed them on elevated
scaffolds. In parts of the Yukon, California, and the Great Basin area, some
tribes cremated the dead. The Choctaws skeletonized their deceased and then
stored the bones in bone houses; some of the Pueblo buried their dead in refuse
mounds. In still other parts of North America, Indians left their dead to be
eaten by dogs or wolves. And the Teton Dakotas wrapped their dead in cloth and
then placed them in forked trees. 87

Today, contrary to centuries of Christian opposition, more and more
Christian denominations, even some conservative ones, are permitting their
members to cremate the deceased bodies of their loved ones. However, before
1930 in the United States, cremation was considered "bizarre." 88 In 1996 about 22 percent of the dead in the
United States were cremated, and it is estimated that by 2010 the number will
climb to 40 percent. 89 With the growing
practice of cremation, many no longer see it as bizarre, but a new kind of
bizarreness is now often present, especially with regard to how many survivors
dispose of the ashes. Some have shot the ashes into space. Sometimes they are
cast on the ocean, as in the case of John Kennedy Jr. in 1999. Frequently they
are sprinkled on flower gardens. One firm in California mixes the ashes with
gun powder and packs them in fireworks; an Iowa firm will, upon request, put
the ashes into shotgun shells. 90

What accounts for the recent increase in cremation practices? Among many
Christians it probably reflects ignorance about how strongly the early
Christians felt in rejecting the custom. Among non-Christians it likely
indicates a denial of the resurrection. And, as noted above, it also reflects a
permissive church posture. For instance, the Roman Catholic Church, which once
strongly condemned it, in 1963 made an about-face regarding cremation by not
only accepting it but also producing an order of worship for the practice. In
1969 the Church of England also accepted it. Many other church bodies, with the
exception of the Eastern Orthodox Church, are imitating the Catholics and the
Church of England. This change, similar to churches tolerating or accepting
abortion on demand, indicates that some of the once-powerful influences that
the church exerted in society for two millennia are slowly eroding.

Nowhere is there any evidence that the early Christians and their descendants
believed that an omnipotent God could not, or would not, resurrect cremated
individuals. That was never a question. They had other reasons for spurning
cremation. Along with their belief in the resurrection of the body, they wanted
to be faithful to the long-standing biblical practice of placing the dead
person back into the earth from which God created him. In doing so, they, like
their Jewish forbears, were mindful of the words of Moses that when man's life
is over, he would "return to the ground" (Genesis 3:19). This is corroborated
by the church historian Eusebius. Quoting the Christians, who saw many of their
fellow believers martyred and burned by the pagans in Lyons in 177, he has them
saying, "but in our circle great grief obtained because we could not bury the
bodies in the earth" (Ecclesiastical History 1:437). Centuries later, Johann
Heermann (1558 - 1647), the hymn writer, captured this Christian sentiment in
his hymn "O God, Thou Faithful God." In one stanza he wrote:

And let
my body have A quiet resting-place Within a Christian grave And
let it sleep in peace.

The early Christians were mindful of Christ's
promise: "For a time is coming when all who are in the graves will hear his
voice and come out - those who have done good will rise to live, and those who
have done evil will rise to be condemned" (John 5:28 - 29). They heard him say
"graves," not "urns." But even with the rise in cremation practices, the
majority of the deceased in Western societies are still being buried, yet
another sign of Christianity's pervasive, two-thousand-year influence.

CONCLUSION

People who today see murder and mass atrocities
as immoral may not realize that their beliefs in this regard are largely the
result of their having internalized the Christian ethic that holds human life
to be sacred. There is no indication that the wanton taking of human life was
morally revolting to the ancient Romans. One finds no evidence in Roman
literature that indicates that incidents such as the ethnic cleansing
atrocities in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s or the Columbine High
School massacre in Colorado in 1999, for example, would have been morally
abhorrent to the ancient leaders of Rome or to its populace. One need only
remember how both the Roman populace and its emperors enjoyed seeing gladiators
massacred in the arenas. These events and other massive atrocities evoked no
sympathy or moral outrage. It was part of the stoic culture of pagan Rome.

The low view of life and its accompanying lack of moral outrage is also
seen in the behavior of many Roman emperors. The Roman view that life was
cheap, including that of the emperors, easily fostered paranoia in many
emperors, leading them to kill large numbers of people whom they perceived as
possible enemies or traitors, within or without the imperial court. Suetonius,
the biographer of emperors, says that under Tiberias (A.D. 14 - 37) "not a day
passed without an execution." 91 Caligula
(A.D. 37 - 41) enjoyed killing individuals, and sometimes he would shut down
granaries so that people would starve to death. And from 27 B.C. to A.D. 324,
only thirteen (26 percent) of the fifty emperors who reigned during that period
died a natural death; the other thirty-seven were either assassinated or
committed suicide. Given the low value of life, it mattered little whose life
was extinguished. Whether it was executing Christian martyrs, encouraging or
committing suicide, assassinating emperors, or slaughtering gladiators, the
Roman conscience was not stirred. Thus, the moral revulsion in regard to the
taking of innocent life of humans, on a large or small scale, came about
largely as the result of Christianity's doctrine human life is sacred.

Significant as the influence of Christianity has been in giving sanctity
to human life, recent trends indicate that its salutary value is diminishing.
For instance, it is well known that since 1976, each year in the United States
alone one-third of pregnancies have been aborted, amounting to more than one
million per year. 92 The Alan Gutmacher
Institute reports that 13,000 partial-birth abortions are occurring annually in
the United States. 93 In 1991, sixty-five
babies were abandoned in the United States, a figure that grew to 105 in 1998.
Thirteen infants were abandoned in Houston, Texas, alone during a ten-month
period in 1999. 94

Christianity's
high view of human life is also diminishing as some people seriously begin to
argue that human life is not more valuable than the life of animals. Media
executive Ted Turner was heard to remark in a speech that Christianity was to
blame for having taught that humans are of higher value than animals.
95 A related argument appeared in an
editorial of Wild Earth magazine. The writer suggested that every problem on
earth, whether social or environmental, is caused by humans, and he concluded,
"No matter what you're doing to improve life on Earth, I think you'll find that
phasing out the human race will increase your chances for success."
96

If the decline with respect to
the sanctity of human life continues and becomes even more common, the
following story may no longer have much significance. During World War II on a
remote island in the Pacific, an American soldier met a native who could read,
and the native was carrying a Bible. Upon seeing the Bible, the soldier said,
"We educated people no longer put much faith in that book." The native, from a
tribe of former cannibals, replied, "Well, it's good that we do, or you would
be eaten by my people today." 97 This is
only one illustration of how Christ's magnanimous influence has taught people
that human life is sacred. It is one of Christianity's outstanding legacies.